"It has been the misfortune of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the constitution of our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation than enjoyment." - Edmund Burke anticipates the Neverendum

Friday, August 11, 2006

Connecting the dots

"Alone among the countries of Europe, Britain pursues a foreign policy indistinguishable from that of the United States.

Alone among the countries of Europe, Britain has not pressed for an immediate ceasefire in the month-long Middle East conflict.

Alone among the countries of Europe, Britain has played a leading part in waging a war described by the United Nations as illegal.

Now our diplomacy is sidelined. Our voice is an echo. Our moral authority scarcely exists. Our people are the targets of terrorism and the threats of terrorism, wherever they are, and whether they travel by underground or in the air."

Our diplomacy irrelevant, our voice but an echo; yet simultaneously the absence of our intervention is responsible for the war in Lebanon? Woe unto us - we are surely undone.

But also a little confused since an operation of this nature would have obviously taken more than a month in the planning, surely?

Lebanon is irrelevant to this but since he brought it up, shouldn't his attempt to connect the failure to conform to international law with terrorism include the fact that the military wing of Hizbollah has no right to exist (pdf) - in the interests of consistency?

There's also the problem that Martin Bell is either unaware of what countries constitute Europe or of what their foreign policies are, or both.

Which is not to say that had his chronology and geography been more accurate, his argument would have been much more appealing because no doubt it would carry much the same sickly mixture of piety and self-loathing.